Never was there a more outrageous or more unscrupulous or ill informed advertising campaign than that by which the promoters for the American colonies brought settlers here. Brochures published in England in the seventeenth century, some even earlier, were full of hopeful over-statements, half-truths and downright lies. Gold and silver, fountains of youth, plenty of fish, venison without limit. How long might it have taken to settle this continent if there had not been such slick promotion. How has American civilization been shaped by the fact that there was a kind of natural selection here of those people who were willing to believe in advertising?

The last great charge of the Highland clansmen—cut down by the volleys of the Redcoat English and Lowland Scots. The life of the clans was suppressed forever. Gaelic proscribed. Native dress (kilts and plaid) forbidden, organization banned, leaders banished.

Clearances allowed Loyalist landowners to expel the inhabitants and replace them with sheep. The result was an uninhabited Highlands which thrills tourists today and leaves more Scots in the United States than in Scotland.

The clearances combined with the two centuries old enclosure movement drove the small holders from the land in Britain and the purges deprived England of the small farmers that might have dissipated the rigid class system.